During Quarantine, I saw a moment as a blessing in disguise. I was happy to finally have a break from schoolwork, and from being forced to socialize with people that I found detestable. For a while, the beginning of quarantine was just that, a fun break for someone who was perfectly fine with being alone.

After about a month, I could feel this vision that I set up for myself about what quarantine was beginning to crumble. It was harder to eat anything, and I found that the only way I was able to eat was by forcing myself to eat, practically force-feeding myself every night. I could barely find the energy to leave my bed at times, except leaving to go to the bathroom or to grab the smallest snack which would prove to hold me over for the next day and a half. I knew there was something genuinely wrong with me at the time, and I did try to reach out and ask for help, but each time I did I would back away from whoever extended their arms towards me with extreme guilt. It felt more awful living with the knowledge that I was a burden on others and making them worry about me than it did when I was on my own with my unhealthy coping mechanisms.

I don’t entirely know what caused the downward spiral in my mental health, I just know that it hasn’t gotten better. It’s even harder to sit down and eat a full meal than it was a few months ago, and everything that I found enjoyable feels dull and unexciting. The only thing I can find to bring my mood up anymore is my friends, talking with them, texting them, it doesn’t matter, I just enjoy knowing that they’re around me and that they like to be with me. I’m sure that my friends don’t realize it, but they are the most important people in my life. They’re the people I can genuinely be myself around without worrying about constant ridicule, or being judged. I’m sure I’m still important to them, but because of previous issues with friendships in the past, I have huge insecurities/trust issues especially with friendships. The worst part about myself is that I need constant reassurance and validation, or else I’ll begin to think that I am the most hated and despicable creature to ever rear its ugly face on the planet. For me, it only takes the smallest things to trigger a cataclysmic shake in my mental stability. I recall one time during quarantine, where one of my friends said something to me in a call, and while it likely was a joke, It felt as though I’d been stabbed through the heart with a newly sharpened knife.

Overall, I wouldn’t say that my mental health pre-quarantine was necessarily the best, but these few months of isolation have taken a tremendous toll on me and my mental and physical health. I yearn to be happy the way I was in February and March because it was the last time I could go more than a week without breaking down or be able to sit down and eat a full meal of food with no problems. I miss how my friendships were, too. I miss being able to see the people I cared about every day, even if I made new friends and strengthened old bonds.